By Vinnie Manginelli, PGA
Jonathan Mielke is the PGA of America Director of Instruction at Eagle Hills Golf Course in Papillion, Nebraska. His growing list of accolades includes Best Teachers in the State honors from Golf Digest, the 2020 Nebraska PGA Section Teacher of the Year Award, the 2016 and 2020 Nebraska PGA Section Youth Player Development Award, U.S. Kids Top 50 Master Kids Coach and National Finalist for the PGA of America Youth Player Development Award in 2022 and 2023. As if that weren’t enough, Mielke is a three-time Golf Range Association of America (GRAA) Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional.
“I grew up learning, playing and competing in Wisconsin as a multiple sport athlete, including soccer, baseball, hockey, snowboarding and golf,” Mielke boasts. “After high school, I decided to set my goals on playing professional golf, moving to Arizona. After a year in the desert heat and hundreds of hours working on my game, I turned professional.”
Mielke played professionally for seven years across multiple tours – Hooter’s, Pepsi, Gateway, Canadian – and after an injury, he found his true love to be coaching golf.
“My first job in the golf industry was at Riverview Golf Course in Mesa, Arizona,” Mielke recalls. “I started in outside services, picking up golf balls and staging carts, and within three years went from outside services to assistant professional to tournament director to director of instruction.”
Over the past 30 years, Mielke’s coaching resume has taken him from Riverview in Mesa to The Desert Mountain Club in Scottsdale, Arizona to Oak Hills Country Club in Omaha, Nebraska to his present role at Eagle Hills. He says he’s had some incredible mentors throughout his career who have helped shape him into the PGA of America Golf Professional he is today. Mielke admits there are too many to cite each one, but pays homage to a few.
“James Mooney, PGA, a former PGA Tour professional and the GM at Riverview is my buddy,” Mielke says. “I call him Babe Ruth. He was my first lesson and remains a good friend. In addition, PGA of America Golf Professionals, Dale Abraham, Will Robins and Mike Zadalis, as well as Mike Mooney former PGA and Joanne Martinez from Riverview, all deserve my thanks for helping guide me through the years.”
The most important people to point out, however, are his wife and kids. “Without them, I would not be able to do what I do in golf.”
When discussing his current programming, Mielke says his students range from beginners to Tour professionals. As the Nike Junior Golf Camp Director and Director of the Mielke Golf Youth Academy, he has designed an extensive youth golf program that touches over 200 athletes annually over four levels.
“We have also been very successful with Ladies 101 and 201 programs, Get Golf Ready programs, wedge game schools, short game scoring schools and scoring on the course programs,” he explains. “I am also working with the Omaha Sports Commission, coaching executive ladies how to play golf and feel more comfortable on the course when they’re invited to their company’s golf outings. In two years, I have coached women from 20 different companies.”
Mielke says he’s always seeking new ways to bring the game of golf to kids. So, five years ago, he went back to school for Computer Science and Game Design and opened MADA-D Studio. MADA-D is a game development studio dedicated to promoting youth golf by providing an innovative golf educational system delivered through a fun video game-based approach.
“I have designed and coded five educational golf video games,” he says. “With game titles like Chomp the Golf Ball, Swing Positions, Catch the Range, The 2 D’s and Project 2, each game is designed to help youth golfers understand and learn all aspects of the game of golf. It has been a huge success with over 50,000 plays.”
After the success of MADA-D, the Mielke Golf Youth Academy blew up with a wait list of more than 50 athletes. The newest request from parents in the academy is homework. Mielke is a big believer in understanding the intricacies of coaching and building neural pathways for young athletes to build athletic skills.
“One of the greatest tools I have in neural pathways is my mazes,” Mielke explains.
With so many parents asking for more, Mielke published a Youth Golf Maze and Activity Book. This book has been designed with a dual purpose:
1) Youth athletes learn about the ten parts of the golf course and the different types of golf clubs and their uses. Cartoon characters coach them along the way with mazes and attention-getting golf graphics. During this journey, athletes are tested with some fun challenges to reveal two secret messages. If they answer both correctly, a website is revealed to them.
2) It builds the foundation to develop the Top 5 skills that a youth athlete needs to excel in sports and life:
Cognitive Skills
Mazes act like brain-boosting exercises. Solving them requires athletes to think, reason and remember. This sharpens memory and helps build focus while increasing the concentration level of their mind.
Motor Skills
Maze work requires the athlete to navigate the correct path through narrow passages without going outside of the maze borders. They are developing the motor skills that allow them to move through the maze while manipulating an object – the pencil. This motor movement will also help them produce readable handwriting later as they develop.
Visual Skills
While athletes might not realize it, they visually scan their eyes over the maze at the start and are planning out their moves. Scanning the maze helps them expand their visual power. This ability to scrutinize complex settings allows them to form a successful plan.
Eye-Brain-Hand Coordination
Working with mazes requires athletes to use their visual skills to send signals to the brain to move their hand and pencil through the maze without touching the lines. Eye-Brain-Hand coordination requires athletes to have a clear picture, which in turn, produces a very precise signal to the brain to produce a movement.
Spatial Skills
Maze work requires visual-spatial processing. To complete a maze, the athlete must look ahead and chart their path, know where they are in relation to the starting point and then orient themselves in the right direction. Spatial skills help athletes coordinate their movements with what they see.
Check out Mielke’s innovative lesson and activity book here.
Mielke uses FlightScope radar, SAM PuttLab, J.C. Video and the CoachNow app. This technology allows him to help his students bridge the gap between “feel and real” and allows them to obtain, and more importantly, retain the skills they are learning.
“I see the trend and the future of golf instruction moving away from being golf instructors to being golf coaches,” Mielke concludes. “Instead of selling blocks of time working on swing positions and quick fixes, golf coaches work with their students on how to score on the golf course. Making great swings does not mean the student will lower their scores, there is a lot more that goes into playing and scoring in golf. If you look at all the other sports, the coach watches the athlete play. In golf, the instructor tends to only see the student on the range in a controlled environment. I believe the future of golf will lead to more coaching of the game.”
